ISO stands for the Insurance Service Office. Now recognized as Verisk, a company that provides the Fire Suppression Rating Schedule (FSRS), used by some of the many homeowners’ insurance companies. Your homeowner’s insurance company may use the FSRS as a scoring matrix that helps them establish your risk associated with fire and subsequently the premiums you pay for your homeowner’s hazard insurance. The worse your FSRS rating, the higher your premiums may be.
Recognized Fire Departments such as Pleasant Hill Goshen Fire & Rescue are rated based on an established criteria list. The end result is a score on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the worst and the equivalent of ‘unprotected’. Pleasant Hill and Goshen Fire Districts were scored together in 2017 as a result of our established Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA). The previous scores for each district are outlined below:
Goshen Fire District ISO Rating – 5/8b/10
- 5 Rating applied to properties within 1,000 feet of a fire hydrant
- 8b rating applied to properties outside fire hydrant coverage but within 5 road miles of a fire station
- 10 rating applied to properties that didn’t meet the above criteria
Pleasant Hill Fire District ISO Rating – 5/10
- 5 rating applied to any properties within 5 road miles of either the Pleasant Hill or Jasper Fire Station.
- 10 rating applied to properties not classified above.
When rated in 2017, Pleasant Hill Goshen Fire & Rescue received a final score of 69.31 out of 105.5. This translates into improving our rating to a 4/10. The 4 rating applies to all properties within 5 road miles of a fire station, with anyone else receiving a rating of 10. The noted improvements to get this improved score were in our training program, inspection/preplanning program, fire station staffing & deployment, and the equipment we have available to provide service. The combined agency also improved as a result of demonstrating our capability to shuttle water. This improvement may have saved our residents money on their homeowners’ insurance premiums.
You may notice that our score of 69.31 is also .61 points away from moving into the 3 rating. (See page 3 of the linked document.) The best upgrades to aid in our organization receiving a better score would be improvements to our in-station/on-duty staffing, replacement of outdated fire engines, improved response times, and the number of personnel we are able to deploy. The lack of facilities for on-duty personnel at the Pleasant Hill Fire Station impacts our ability to staff the fire station at night.
We are already seeing improvements in our training and prevention programs. Our organization would be scored again following the efforts to make the working relationship between Pleasant Hill and Goshen permanent and improving the delivery of service to the community.
To learn more about our scores, the full Public Protection Classification Summary report is below.